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Veal Loaf
Put one and one-half pounds of veal into a stewpan with an onion, carrot and bunch of sweet herbs, pepper and salt, and sufficient water to cover it, and stew the veal gently until tender. Ornament the interior of a mould with hard-boiled eggs, beet-root and olives, all cut into different shapes, and stuck with half-set aspic jelly. Leave the mould until the jelly has set. Drain the veal when cooked, trim off all the fat, chop it fine, and mix one pint of liquid jelly with it. When the mince is nearly cold, turn it carefully into the decorated mould, and leave till set. Turn the shape out of the mould onto a fancy dish, garnish it with parsley, and serve at once.
A cold moulded veal in aspic, of the sort that anchored a hotel buffet table. Nothing here is difficult, but the whole thing depends on getting the jelly to the right consistency at each stage.
- The hinge: half-set jellyDecoration is fixed with aspic that has thickened to the texture of raw egg white but has not gelled. Too warm and the eggs and beets slide; too cold and it seizes in lumps. Set the bowl of jelly over ice water and stir until it just begins to hold a trail.
- Aspic jellyIn this period the term meant a clarified, well-reduced veal or chicken stock stiff enough to unmould, often reinforced with a calf's foot. Modern stock will not set on its own: use about 1 tablespoon of powdered gelatine per pint of well-flavoured, defatted stock, and clarify it with egg white if you want it clear.
- QuantitiesA pint of liquid jelly: 16 fl oz (2 cups) by American measure, 20 fl oz if the book is following imperial. Either way you will need more than the stated pint, for the decoration and for filling gaps around the mince, so have an extra cup on hand.
- The vealShoulder or breast is right — cheap, gelatinous cuts that shred when tender. Simmer gently, never boiling, roughly 1 to 1.5 hours for 1.5 lb; boiling makes veal stringy and clouds the cooking liquid, which you will want to reduce for the aspic.
- Chop, do not process"Chop it fine" means knife-cut to a coarse mince. A food processor turns cooked veal into paste, and the loaf loses the texture that distinguishes it from a pâté.
- Temperature when filling"Nearly cold" is literal. Warm mince will melt the set decoration at the bottom of the mould and muddy the pattern. Fill only when both the mince and its jelly are cool and beginning to thicken.
- Mould and unmouldingA 1-quart charlotte mould, loaf tin or pudding basin all work. Chill at least 4 hours, preferably overnight; dip the mould in hot water for 5 to 10 seconds, then invert onto a chilled platter.
- Serving and holdingServes 4 to 6 as a cold course. Because it is set meat served cold, keep it refrigerated until the moment it goes out and return leftovers to the fridge promptly rather than letting it stand on a warm table.
Cold moulded meats in aspic were the backbone of the late-nineteenth-century buffet and the hotel garde manger department, where a cook's standing was measured by how cleanly a decorated mould turned out. Veal was the natural choice: mild in flavour so it took the seasoning of the stock, and rich enough in collagen that its own cooking liquid would set. The vocabulary is French — aspic, the "shape," the ornamented interior — reflecting the training of the kitchens that produced such pieces, which did double duty as food and as table ornament, sliced to reveal the pattern of egg, beet and olive worked into the jelly. The technique long outlived the fashion; jellied veal loaf survived in American home cookbooks well into the twentieth century, generally in a plainer form set in a loaf tin with no decoration at all.